


Men, Women, and Chainsaws

by Snickfic



Category: Scream (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, F/F, One-sided Kirby Reed/Sidney Prescott, Pre-Canon, Queer Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27185896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: Stabwasn’t even the first horror movie Kirby saw.
Relationships: Kirby Reed/Original Female Character
Comments: 12
Kudos: 12
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	Men, Women, and Chainsaws

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GotTheSilver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GotTheSilver/gifts).



When Kirby was five—just barely, just a smidge too late to start kindergarten with Alicia next door—everything got weird for a while. She saw police cars drive past her house in the evenings. Her nanny Maricela started insisting Kirby stay in the same room with her all the time, which was boring. Maricela didn’t tell her what had happened; each time Kirby asked, Maricela crossed herself and then put a finger to Kirby’s lips, shaking her head. 

Kirby’s parents didn’t tell her either, when they were finally all together for dinner on the same night. Kirby’s mom told her it was nothing, and Kirby’s dad said it sure the hell seemed like something, so maybe her mom should be more careful who she showed houses to, maybe she should take a break and watch out for Kirby. Kirby stopped listening. She already knew how that fight went.

It was Alicia who told her, in a clandestine huddle at the back of their respective yards, where the hedge between them wasn’t so thick. “Some people died,” Alicia said, eyes shining. Even then, Kirby knew Alicia loved telling people things. “Somebody stabbed them with a knife.”

“They did not,” Kirby said, lest Alicia feel too impressed with herself. 

After all the excitement was over, after Maricela allowed Kirby out of her sight again, Kirby found the newspaper stuffed in the garbage. The headline was in huge, black letters. Kirby couldn’t read it. She could only look at the picture below it of a much older girl, nearly an adult, with bruises on her face, with bangs and freckles and dark, sad eyes. She was beautiful.

\--

_Stab_ wasn’t even the first horror movie Kirby saw. Alicia said it was boring. “Everybody already knows what happened,” Alicia said, full of scorn. “The town doesn’t even look right.”

Kirby didn’t know, really. She barely remembered that weird October when she was five. It felt like ancient history, nearly as old as mammoths.

It didn’t matter anyway. _Stab_ wasn’t on the table—because, as Kirby eventually figured out, Alicia’s brother Damon didn’t have a copy of it in his room, where Kirby and Alicia were absolutely forbidden to go. But Damon wasn’t home, and Alicia’s mom had ‘stepped out for a moment,’ so there was no one stopping Alicia and Kirby from surveying their options.

Kirby didn’t remember later how they picked _Halloween_. What she remembered was huddling with Alicia under the covers on Alicia’s bed, hearing the first ominous notes of the opening credits music and feeling a strange, delicious thrill. 

She felt a different, equally strange thrill in the opening scene as the camera turned a corner and showed a girl’s bare breasts. The girl sat there in front of a mirror, naked and brushing her hair—which seemed impractical to Kirby, who hated the tickle of fallen hairs on her bare skin—and then a knife flashed in and out of view, in and out again, until the naked girl was dead.

There were other things Kirby remembered: Alicia’s warmth pressed next to Kirby’s under the comforter. Almost peeing herself when a thoroughly dead boyfriend swung into view from the depths of a closet. And most of all she remembered Laurie Strode, who was so tall and so cool, who had really long legs and fought a serial killer to save the kids she was babysitting. Laurie Strode _survived_. It didn’t even matter that Kirby never saw her breasts—although it was not entirely clear to Kirby why that would matter, anyway.

“She was so pretty, right?” Kirby said when it was over.

Alicia gave her an odd look and then shrugged, deciding Kirby’s eccentricities weren’t worth pursuing. “I guess.”

\--

Pretty quickly, Kirby figured out two things. First, horror movies were _real_ on a fundamental level, full of death and blood, the deep down stuff life was made of. There were no perfectly-dressed real estate agents in horror movies, no local businessmen in suits —or if there were, they died early, perfunctory deaths.

Second, there were loads of girls in horror movies, really cool ones. Some of them got naked; sometimes Kirby paused those scenes in the middle or watched them a couple of times over. And then in every movie there was the other girl, the final girl: the coolest of all.

\--

Kirby did see _Stab_ eventually, of course. Aimee showed it to her. Aimee had short, dark hair and vivid makeup that Kirby’s mom disapproved of, and sometimes she smoked. She’d moved to Woodsboro the previous summer, and she’d have been doomed to the band kids table at lunch if Kirby hadn’t seen the little homemade Ghostface pin stuck on her backpack.

Aimee couldn’t believe Kirby had never seen the _Stab_ movies. “You _live_ here,” she said again, in her crazy cool ( _wicked_ cool) Boston accent. “You’re a Woodsboro native . How can you not have seen them?”

“I was waiting for you,” Kirby said, very smooth. The corner of Aimee’s blood-red mouth ticked up in a way Kirby found really distracting.

They watched _Stab_ on a night Kirby’s parents were out of town—which was to say it could have been any of six nights out of seven. Aimee suggested Saturday, though, so that they could pull an all-nighter and watch all the sequels, too. They watched them at Aimee’s house in her basement bedroom. They huddled together in the dark, shoulder to shoulder.

Alicia had been right about one thing, years ago: the town in the movie didn’t look much like Woodsboro. It was disorientating, watching the camera pan over a school named _Woodsboro High_ that looked nothing like the building Kirby walked grudgingly into five days a week.

The gore was great, though, the jump scares top notch. A-plus suspense. The lead actress was a polished kind of Hollywood-pretty, unlike the photos Kirby had seen of the real Sidney, but she was no less badass.

As the credits rolled on _Stab 2_ , Aimee said, “She’s hot, right?”

Kirby couldn’t see much more of Aimee than the shadow of her nose and the dim glow of the screen glinting in her eyes. Kirby licked her lips. Her heart was pounding harder than it had during a horror movie in years. She was a _pro_ , she didn’t spook anymore, but still she could feel her pulse thudding in her throat. “Yeah,” Kirby said at last. “She’s fucking hot.”

Aimee’s mouth tasted gritty like cigarettes, salty like popcorn, and like lipstick, flat and chemical. It took Kirby a while to identify all the flavors. By then, Aimee’s hand had found its way to Kirby’s boob.

They saved _Stab 3_ and _4_ for the next weekend. Kirby’s parents were gone then, too.

\--

Aimee’s family moved again at the end of the school year. “Be cool,” Kirby said, as she and Aimee said their last goodbyes. Aimee’s lipstick was smudged. Kirby could still taste it. “Fuck up ‘em all up,” she told Aimee, and then she went home to cry for a week.

\--

Charlie Walker seemed like a good idea at the time. He was pretty cute, and whatever he lacked in personality he made up for with horror theory. It was possible Kirby’s actual sexuality was a deep and undeniable attraction to people who had opinions about which Halloween sequels were the best ( _Halloween H20_ , obviously, _Halloween II_ in a pinch) and which minor _Stab_ kill deserved her own franchise (definitely Kristen Stewart).

He was less of a good idea in retrospect, after he’d stabbed her through several major organs. Kirby spent a short eternity in the hospital, floating on a cocktail of mortification and painkillers. Just because she wanted to do Sidney Prescott didn’t mean she wanted to _be_ her.

The only, literally the _only_ bright spot was when Sidney herself rolled into Kirby’s hospital room in a wheelchair pushed by one Sheriff Dewey Riley. Probably he had better things to do, but everybody knew he and Sidney went way back. It was in the movies, after all.

“Hey,” Sidney said, after Sheriff Riley had excused himself. “I just—I wanted to check in, see how you were doing.”

“I’m okay,” Kirby said, a little high, a little squeaky. Face to face with Sidney Prescott, all Kirby’s cool flew right out the window. The drugs probably didn’t help either. “Uh, how about you? I heard you got skewered, too.” 

“Yeah,” Sidney said, grimacing. She shifted a little, and that brought on another, deeper grimace. “It’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

That startled a laugh out of Kirby. It came to her through the drugged soup of her thoughts that Sidney was treating her like an adult. Like they were alike—because they fucking were. Sometimes that happened in later installments: two final girls for the price of one. Or four, if you wanted to count Gale Weathers and Sheriff Riley, but then Sidney Prescott always had played by her own damn rules. Sweet fuck, she was hot.

“To us,” Kirby said. She raised her half-finished Jello cup to the sky. “The final girls.”

“To us,” Sidney echoed.

[end]


End file.
